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3/16/2010 “You take care of things that are important to you,” Dr. Jellie said

Jude Deveraux - Lavender Morning.html as he looked at David, smiling.

“Yes, sir, you do.”

“Waxed cloth? Courier’s packet?”

“Yes,” David said, grinning back at him. “We fished our suitcases from out of the car in the river and

that was inside mine and as dry as when I put it in there.”

“Good boy,” Dr. Jellie said, getting out of his chair. He took the invitation over to a table and opened a

box that contained glass jars of what looked to be alcoholic beverages.

“I could use some of that,” David said, putting out his hand.

“Drink one of these and your tongue will dissolve in a very unpleasant fizz.”

David drew his hand back.

“Now let me see,” Dr. Jellie said, “which one should I try?”

David put his hand on Eddie’s arm and drew her toward the fire to give Dr. Jellie some privacy. A

couple of awful smells came from his direction but at last he said, “There, now, I have it. I’m to go to London

with you two and Austin is going to send me to the U.S.”

David was the first to recover. “That’s it? But we already knew that. We
told
you that.”

“Spies have a rather frequent habit of disappearing, so they find that paper is better.”

“But that paper ended up on the bottom of a river.”

“Ah, but even then it was protected. My guess is that Austin knew it would be so precious to you that

you’d take care of it.”

“Yes,” David said, looking at Eddie and smiling. “Very precious.”

“Well now that that’s done, I suggest we all get a good night’s sleep and start off to London tomorrow.

Do you require one room or two?”

“One!” Eddie said quickly, and held up her left hand to show the ring she wore on her trip around the

country. “We’re married.”

“So you are,” Dr. Jellie said, smiling.

He said that the next morning the beautiful Boadicea rode off in the carriage to return it to Hamish and

an hour later came running down the hill. He said he’d never in his life seen a more beautiful sight than that tall

girl running down the hill toward her lover. Dr. Jellie said he always wondered how different his life would

have been if there had been a woman who looked at him like that, but, alas, there never was.

He told how the three of them took the train back to London and he said that he’d never seen any two

people more in love than they were. They had eyes only for each other, only wanted to be with one another.

There was someone waiting for Dr. Jellie when they got to London, and the beautiful Eddie and her love,

David, were swept away. He never saw or heard about them ever again.

26

J
OCE WAS SITTING quietly in Dr. Dave’s study and she was thinking about Miss Edi and her beloved

David. She knew what happened next. He was killed and she was burned.

“That’s only the beginning of the story,” Luke said softly.

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“The beginning? That was the end of it.”

“No,” Dr. Dave said. “Right after you told me about General Austin I wanted to go to New Hampshire and

see if I could get the letters.”

Joce looked at Luke. “That’s what you two were talking about that night at dinner.”

“Yes,” he said, “and that’s why I didn’t want you to go with me, but you nagged until I couldn’t stand it

anymore, so I let you go, then you got your feelings hurt because—”

“You two already sound like an old married couple,” Dr. Dave said. “Save it for later. Show her the

letters.”

Luke pulled a single piece of paper out of his grandfather’s briefcase and handed it to her. She dreaded

reading the letters, as she was sure they’d be full of the accident and what Miss Edi had gone through in the two

years it took her to recover.

6 October 1944

Remember Harcourt, the best secretary I ever had? I sent her on assignment with my driver, and it looks like

they did more than I asked of them. She’s four months pregnant. I got so mad I would have made them get

married, but he was sent to another unit and even I can’t find him. Harcourt wanted to transfer out but I won’t

let her.

18 December 1944

Remember Harcourt? That guy she married got killed. Her kid’s due in the spring, so I’ll have to send her

away after Christmas. Thank God she hasn’t grown a big belly yet so nobody knows. Without her my office

will fall apart.

21 April 1945

Remember Harcourt? I just heard she was in a horrible accident where she was badly burned. She’s not

expected to live. The nurse I talked to said the kid was stillborn. I don’t think any loss in this war has hurt me

as much as this one. I had her transferred stateside so she can die at home.

Jocelyn read the excerpts three times before she looked up at Luke and Dr. Dave. “Baby?” she whispered,

and tears came to her eyes. “That poor, poor woman. She lost more than even I thought she did.”

“No,” Dr. Dave said as he took Jocelyn’s hands in his own. “You have my grandson to thank for all of this,

as he was the one who was suspicious.”

“Suspicious of what?” she asked as Luke handed her a tissue.

“That nothing rang true,” Luke said. “If you’d known Uncle Alex you would have understood. He said he

owed Edilean Harcourt his entire
life,
and he wanted to pay her back. Giving her a job, letting her live for free in

a house, that meant nothing to him. He’d done that for several people who’d worked for him all their lives.”

“Luke, what are you trying to tell me?”

“With Gramps’s help, I hired an entire team of researchers in England and we went back through a lot of

World War II records.”

“To find out where the baby was…was buried?” Joce asked softly.

“Yes and no.” He sat down on an ottoman in front of her. “It was the name Clare that did it for me.

Remember in the section where Miss Edi said she kept calling for David when everyone thought she was going to

die?”

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“Yes.”

“David
Clare.
”

Joce looked at Dr. Dave. “I’m not getting the point here. What am I missing?”

“Who else do you know is named Clare?”

“No one I know has that last name.”

The two men kept looking at her.

“My mother is named Claire.”

Dr. Dave and Luke smiled at each other.

“Wait a minute!” Joce said. “You’re not trying to tell me that my mother—”

“Was the daughter of Edilean Harcourt and David Clare. Yes, she was. Show her,” Luke said.

Dr. Dave handed Joce some charts such as she’d often seen on TV. DNA charts. She looked at them

blankly.

“Sorry for all the secrecy, but if what we suspected hadn’t been true, we didn’t want you to be hurt,” Dr.

Dave said. “It was easy to get DNA from you, and not so difficult to get it for Edi. She was a great letter writer

and she’d licked a lot of envelopes.”

“Miss Edi was my grandmother?” Joce asked in a faint whisper.

“She didn’t know,” Dr. Dave said. “If she’d known, I’m sure she would have told you. I think that Alex

knew about her pregnancy, but no one else did. She stayed in London where no one knew her so she wouldn’t

have to answer questions. She was burned just a couple of weeks before she was due to deliver.”

“But the general said the child was stillborn.”

“We figure that’s what he was told. We have no paper proof, but it looks like Alfred Scovill was in Europe

at the time, making contracts for helmets, and there was a dying woman who’d just given birth to a baby. As far

as we could find out, the birth certificate was made out with Alfred and Frances Scovill as the parents—which,

of course, wasn’t true because his wife was back home in the States. But it was wartime, and there were a lot of

orphans, a lot of tragedies. No one asked many questions. I think Mr. Scovill took the baby home to his wife in

the U.S., moved down to Boca Raton, where no one knew them, and never told anyone the truth. His only

concession was to name the child ‘Claire’ from what the dying mother kept saying.”

When Jocelyn tried to stand up, her legs were so weak that she wobbled. Luke put his arms around her to

steady her, and held her against him for a few minutes. But Joce pushed away and looked at him.

“This is why you said I might need a doctor here.” She was trying to make a joke, but neither man smiled.

They were looking at her hard.

“Are you okay?” Luke asked.

“Just in a state of shock, that’s all. How I wish she’d known. Wish I’d known when she was alive. To

share that bond!”

“But you did,” Dr. Dave said, taking her hand. “Alex found out about your mother, about the people who’d

adopted her, and he bought a house close to them. He set it all up for her to administer the trust, but then he

began to lose his memory.”

“Alzheimer’s,” Jocelyn said.

“Yes. He set everything up through MAW and he concocted that story about knowing the people who

adopted you. We figure Alex meant to let Edi spend some time getting to know you, then he’d tell her the truth.

But Alex…he simply
forgot.
”

Luke went to a side table and mixed her a drink. “I think you need this,” he said as he looked at his

grandfather.

Jocelyn took the drink and sipped it. “I can feel that you two have something more to tell me. Better get it

out before I faint from what you’ve already told me.”

“We found David Clare’s relatives.”

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She looked up at the two tall men, both of them hovering over her, watching her as though she might

collapse at any moment. But their words made her feel less like collapsing than anything they’d said. It would

take her a long time to deal with the fact that Miss Edi never knew what they were to each other, but the idea of

relatives was startling.

“You mean I might have relatives who have an IQ over seventy, who don’t make it their life’s work to

belittle me and make me feel bad?”

“Actually, I think that’s what all relatives do,” Luke said. “My cousins—Ow!” he said when his grandfather

punched him on the arm.

“You have the telephone number?” Dr. Dave asked Luke.

“Sure. Right here with me. I thought I’d call, then Joce could—”

She snatched the paper out of his hands. “They’re my relatives; I’m calling.” She went to the big phone on

Dr. Dave’s desk. “Shall I put it on speaker?”

Both men nodded.

Joce took a couple of deep breaths, then called the number in upstate New York. Immediately, a man’s

voice answered. “I’m sorry to disturb you, sir, but I’m looking for anyone connected to a man named David

Clare, who fought in World War II.”

“Speaking.”

Jocelyn shrugged in puzzlement to the two men. “Are you related to him?”

“I guess I am,” the man said, chuckling.

“You know about Sergeant David Clare who served with General Austin,
that
David Clare?”

“Young lady, I don’t know how else to tell you that I
am
David Clare and that
I
served with old Bulldog

Austin.”

“You,” Jocelyn began, but her voice dropped to a whisper. “But you were killed.”

“I was reported dead, but actually, I was held prisoner until the war was over. I can assure you that I am

alive, not particularly healthy, but alive.”

“Did you know Edilean Harcourt?”

There was a long pause from him. “Yes. She was…killed in 1944.”

“No. Miss Edi died only last year.”

The man’s voice rose in anger. “I don’t appreciate this. Edilean Harcourt was killed in a fire when a jeep

exploded.”

“She wasn’t,” Jocelyn said, near to tears. Was she really talking to Miss Edi’s David—to her own

grandfather? “She lived. Her legs were horribly burned, but she lived. I met her when I was ten years old and she

was my guide, my foster mother—I don’t know what you call her. When she died, she left me her old house—”

“Edilean Manor,” he whispered.

“Yes. Miss Edi never married. She spent most of her life traveling all over the world with a Dr. Brenner and

helping him with disasters. They—” Joce broke off and looked at Luke. “I think he’s crying.” But then Joce

could no longer hold back her tears.

Luke took the phone from her, and by that time a man was yelling. “I don’t know who the hell you are to

make Uncle Dave cry, but—”

In the background, Luke could hear, “No, no, no. It’s about Edi. They knew Edi.”

The angry young man stopped shouting. “You know something about Miss Edi?”

“You’ve heard of her?” Luke asked.

“Are you kidding? I grew up hearing that name. The Lost Love, the only woman Uncle Dave ever loved.

You know something about her? Like where she’s buried? Wait! Uncle Dave wants the phone back.”

Luke put the phone back on speaker so they could all hear.

“Who are you?” David Clare asked.

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“W

3/16/2010 ho are you?” David Clare asked.

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“I think I’m your granddaughter,” Joce said before she started crying again, then David also gave way to

tears.

The young man took the phone over again. “Holy hell! What is up with you people?”